Hands-On: Sega’s New Rambo Arcade Shooter

TOKYO — John Rambo is back, if by "back" we mean "the subject of a new Japanese arcade game."

Sega’s new Rambo light gun shooter came out here a couple of weeks ago, and I finally got a chance to go and try it out for myself.

If you’ve played a light-gun shooter before, this is well-trodden ground for you. Shoot at the enemies that pop up or at the grenades being lobbed at you, and shoot off to the side of the screen to reload. It’s been done before, but it’s a formula that works. And besides, you don’t go into anything Rambo-related expecting innovation: You want to shoot, shoot, and then shoot some more.

The game is a blast to play. Literally. It felt very satisfying to spray bullets with the Uzi gun controllers. I’ve seen someone play House of the Dead in two-player mode by himself, holding both guns, and it feels like Rambo would be the perfect outlet for this, if you felt like paying double. (I didn’t.)

Rambo’s "anger gauge" is a nice touch, and well in keeping with the fiction. Fill it up, and then press a button to go ballistic with a power boost and invincibility, until you run out of bullets.

The graphics aren’t particularly great, even though it supposedly runs on Sega’s Lindbergh system board, which also powers Virtua Fighter 5. But that didn’t really bother me much, and I really liked that it uses actual scenes from one of the movies — Rambo III — to fill in the "storyline" between levels.

I was playing alone, and no else seemed to want to play, but I’m told that if you go two-player, the second player takes up the fight as
Rambo’s sidekick Colonel Troutman.

The game costs 200 yen (around $2) versus the usual 100
yen coin you pay to play most games (and even 50 yen at some spots if you go retro). But with the size of the cabinet, and taking into account the size of Rambo’s gonads, I figure it’s a fair price to pay.

I’m curious to see how well the game will do. Not only was there no one playing during the time I was hanging out there, I had to shoo away some kids who were all leaning on the cabinet while watching someone playing the nearby House of the Dead 4.